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The Morning After: Budget Still Looks Bad For Schools, But Great for Millionaires

RALEIGH — The morning after the Republican-led state legislature voted to override the Governor’s veto of the state budget that slashed public school funding by $190 million, local school systems are left to deal with the mess. Teachers and teacher assistants will be laid off. Class sizes will get bigger. More school programs will be eliminated.

Teachers will get a tiny raise, but they’ll spend it all on books and classroom supplies that their school system can no longer afford.

“Lawmakers turned their back on North Carolina’s children and they put our future in jeopardy,” said Gerrick Brenner, Executive Director of Progress North Carolina. “By failing to end the budget reversions and choosing not to replace expiring federal stimulus dollars, lawmakers left a huge hole in the education budget. Republican lawmakers, and the few Democrats that joined them, knowingly chose tax breaks for millionaires over schools. That’s wrong.”